


The Gardener

by TheEvangelion



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angel Kara Danvers, Angel Lena Luthor, Angel/Demon Lesbians, Angel/Demon Relationship, Belts, Demon Kara Danvers, Demon Lena Luthor, Dom Lena Luthor, Dom/sub, Domestic Discipline, Established Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, F/F, Face Slapping, Heaven & Hell, Lesbian Kara Danvers, Lesbian Lena Luthor, Lesbian Romance, Light Dom/sub, Protective Kara Danvers, Protective Lena Luthor, Romance, Sub Kara Danvers, lesbian bdsm, lesbian smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27515584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEvangelion/pseuds/TheEvangelion
Summary: Prompt Fill: I'd love some sweet domestic discipline. Someone being upset and uncertain, and Someone Else being calm, and rooted, and helpful in the best way.*OR*Heaven/Hell, Angel/Demon, Domestic Discipline Supercorp AU.
Relationships: Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 12
Kudos: 228





	The Gardener

In the garden, she baptises the flowers with an old tin watering can and cares little for the plight of wet spiders. Kara’s fingertips dance across white petals, appraising, encouraging them to puff their shoulders and stand prouder.

Lena dries plates by the kitchen window, faucet glugging, listening to Kara sing in a language so high and abstract it can’t be heard by the human ear. The flowers understand though, Lena is certain of it, on days like this when Kara quietly sings, the garden always seems a bit more vibrant like the poppies feel they have something to prove to Mother.

“There’s my little green thumb,” Lena smirks over her shoulder where boots are being kicked off, hands wiped down, a polite whirlwind making a mess by the back door. “You must have the weight of mountains on your shoulders, my love, I can’t remember the last time you gave them such a telling off.” Lena nods to the sunflowers with downturned, craning heads. “It would seem you’ve broken their hearts,” she observes.

“Foul thing you are,” Kara pushes her cheeks with amusement, her voice full of warmth and fondness as she gratefully takes a cup of coffee from Lena’s hands. “I’ve always known how to handle fragile things, Lena. I’ll teach you some time if you _ask nicely_ —”

“I won’t, but thank you, I have no need for the capacity to tend fragile things… my hands were built differently.” Lena sighs, resting against the kitchen counter with the dish rag flung over her shoulder. “Your garden is certainly coming along though. It’s…” Kara just shakes her head and knows what word will spring to mind. “ _Heavenly_ ,” Lena settles on the same old joke anyway.

“And what do you remember of Heaven?” Kara furrows her brow and kisses her despite the confusion, pecking along her jaw idly until her tongue finds an earlobe for her teeth to nip on. “Tell me?” Kara whispers, teasing.

Lena thinks about it, but Kara has fingers dug in the waistband of her burgundy trousers, pulling them, unbuttoning them, and that makes it difficult to think altogether.

“I know that Heaven is a graveyard not worth bleeding for,” Lena shrugs and doesn’t care anymore. “Because you are here, you are warm, and I need for nothing else.”

Kara pats her rosy cheek, grinning and pleased. “If God had made you when he was in a better mood then you would have been a poet.” She wiggles her blonde eyebrows.

That does it.

“Then I thank the stars he was feeling grumpy that day,” Lena tosses the giggler over her shoulder and makes a bee-line for the bedroom.

When the great uprising first happened in Heaven, the rebellion was quelled with rebel-angels sheared of their wings and kicked from the Kingdom down to the lightless pit.

Earth became the battleground for a war that spanned eight-thousand years of blood and darkness. The humans had forgotten, temporary forgetful creatures, and the war-stories were now just myths and fables. But they remembered every moment of it, some nights they remembered so well that neither of them could find sleep — only the gripping, shaking hands of the other as they whispered of the lost millenias when blood rained down thick enough to supplant the seas.

Those days _must_ stay in the past.

Heaven and Hell had been in a period of indefinite ceasefire for ten-times longer than the war had lasted. Earth was no longer a combat zone, no longer even no man’s land for the two warring sides. For Kara and Lena, Earth was a lovenest, or perhaps a garden where long-lasting things could be grown.

Their relationship was looked upon with disapproval from everywhere of course, quietly whispered about, abided but not approved on either side. They were the original sin of this earthly world, two soldiers on opposite sides of a war that nobody wanted but fervently fought on principle alone. There was fighting no more, but principles always remained.

They still held great power among their own ranks even now, enough that blind eyes were always turned, from up above, from down below. If only because matters worth dying for could be solved at their kitchen table. If only because their bedroom was big enough to make peace treaties between the realms.

“Are you sure you’re not bored of this world?” Kara whispers against her wife’s collarbone as they settle on the blankets. “Do you not miss having six black eyes and blades for wings?” Her eyes light up at the memory of how majestic they once were in their angelic forms, fingers slipping and tracing Lena’s hips as the burgundy suit jacket is tugged off.

“If they heard us talking about matters like that—” Lena laughs, scruffing the troublemaker by the back of her neck to deepen and prolong the kisses. “The ceasefire would end, the Earth would burn Hellfire once more, and I,” Lena pulls away just enough to stare deep into her lover’s cornflower eyes. “Would question how much you really do know about handling fragile things. Peace is perhaps the most fragile thing of all, Kara.”

Kara pauses and nods. Her blue eyes briefly flicker with gold, then her cheeks bones lift into sharp shards and settle back down like a sigh. She’s bored of pretending to be of this world, Lena can tell, and truth be told Lena is growing bored too, but Lena knows there are _much worse_ things to be than bored.

A begrudging leader in a war that is always on the brink of itself, mainly. Their neutralism is their longevity. One wrong move, one reach too far towards either direction, and the battle lines would march right over Solomon’s tomb.

“I remember the first time I saw you.” Lena inhales deeply, her voice barely a murmur in the back of her throat. “The moon fled from the sky, the shores climbed back into the sea, and your wings were so tall they hid the sun and blackened this world into the longest winter.” Lena pauses, pecking the side of Kara’s pushing ribcage. “But, dungarees look oh so lovely on you too little girl.” She undoes the shoulder straps, earning a boisterous laugh in the process.

Goodness, it takes effort to not burn out their human-like impressions, it’s a constant wakeful intention to not dematerialise into teeth and blade-like feathers—and it still amuses Lena to no end that humans paint angels with collarbones and crowns—because she remembers when they had nine rows of daggered teeth sharp enough to slice the wind. She misses those days too, but she knows that she would miss the Sunday newspaper and the simple pleasure of vanilla creamer far more.

“My garden is nearly finished.” Kara mutters quietly, almost to herself. Lena pulls her sweater off anyway, then takes the dungarees the rest of the way down her legs, listening but preoccupied. “This world is pleasant but,” Kara pauses and smiles, homesick. “It doesn’t have winds that sing the mountains pink, it doesn’t have the colour that breath makes when—”

“You forget the things you have now,” Lena interrupts, warm yet firm on the matter. “And you are yearning for things that never were,” she adds with a sigh, gesturing to their home, to their garden. “This is real, _this is ours_. Heaven doesn’t have me there, remember?”

“Maybe we could go together?” Kara sits up all of a sudden, wide-eyed and child-like innocent as though it’s a wonderful idea. “Or, at least, we could sneak in together?” She laughs like a cherub, dragging fingertips up and over the push-pulling ribcage that has yet to utter anything back.

“You’re a sweet little fool.” Lena draws a long, slow breath as though considering it. “A fool, and always that above anything else.” It makes Kara frown.

“Tell me you don’t grow tired of this flesh?” Kara blinks and rubs where her wings used to sprout. “My back was not built for shoulderblades, Lena, but we have carried them for...” She stops, doing the math with flickering eyes but the numbers are just too cyclical now.

“You were built with only good intentions and desires, my dearest, and that will be your downfall once again should you continue to yearn too much for what cannot be.” Lena pulls on the small of Kara’s back for her to come sit on her hips, embracing and nipping the side of her neck as their bodies fold in. “You are pure, and because you are pure you cannot question your logic.”

Lena nuzzles into blonde golden hair, red crimson lips hovering against her earlobe. When she goes to speak, Kara doesn’t let her, fingers creep and cup Lena’s mouth to keep those words inside her chest for just a second longer.

The gardener clutches at her, presses forward into her chest, soothing herself because Lena’s body still faintly throbs with divinity and godliness. When Lena realises what is happening, it makes her shift uncomfortably, she feels too proud to resemble any shape of a church.

Lena sighs and pulls the fingers off her mouth. “You offer sympathy and forgiveness to humans who do not ask for it because you are unable to ask for your own.” She pulls back just far enough to meet her eyes again, full of pity for her wife. “Poor little thing. How suffered you are…”

“And what of you, brother?” Kara husks, her dainty wrists resting on the flats of Lena’s shoulders. “You too once yearned for how it felt to be nearby when God was busy creating galaxies, so close to His presence that we had to shake all that stardust from our hair. What is it like to be so far removed from Him now?” It’s husked with softness, but the question hangs like an insult and Lena understands it as such.

“What is it like to crave for His good favour, still, still, and forever more? Are you not tired of it?” Lena weakly grins, but then her throat emanates the inimitable loud ribbet of a frog — a sign that they are not supposed to be talking of such things and listening ears are now tuned-in.

They both burst and giggle into each other’s plump lips.

“I miss being able to draw miracles with my fingers on frosted glass,” Kara admits, sadly. “There’s an old lady who lives above the repair store in town. She hobbles, she hurts, I can feel it, and I want to take her pain…”

“It isn’t yours to take, her pain is hers.” Lena shrugs, her nails trailing this way and that way along Kara’s spine. “You forget how miraculous it is to be a passenger, an onlooker to the simple pleasures of this world and nothing more.” Her teeth settle on top of a collarbone, then drag and close into an open-mouthed kiss. “We are not angels anymore, and that has to be enough.”

Kara fidgets and sighs, still determined to be heard.

“But I want more—” Lena slaps the tail of the sentence from her lover’s mouth with a thuddy, solid palm.

Words like that were enough to start wars.

When Kara clutches her cheek, her skin glimmers like a puddle of gasoline, unshapable colours that this world doesn’t yet have the spectrum for. She exhales, then inhales, shaking and indignant. Lena watches her shoulderblades shift, as though invisible wings are flapping a deathly wind in her direction. She can’t help but chuckle despite the circumstances, she buries her wife backwards into the blankets.

“Let me teach you wonderment again,” Lena whispers into a jaw that pulls away from her. “Let me show you what you have forgotten, Kara, let me absolve you?”

“You only know how to make things suffer,” Kara spits, her fist tight around the hand pressed into her heart. “I remember the things you did when they nailed the Messiah to that cross. I remember the osprey beaks you made him splutter and cough-up from his throat. I remember the thorns you whispered behind his bleeding eyes. _Oh the way you_ _laughed_ —”

“I made him strong enough to weather solar storms,” Lena interrupts calmly, unable to be engaged in such reductive processes. “Suffering is a divine compass, so yes, I made the boy-king ready for his journey home, as I have made a billion, two billion souls ready for theirs.” Lena presses her thumb into the pressure-point inside the gardener’s elbow. “Let me guide you, dear thing,” Lena whispers, smiling so hard her gleaming white teeth become pronounced.

“Fu—” Kara bites her back teeth and stops herself.

“You can say it,” Lena nods, kissing the top of her blonde crown as she digs a sulphur thumb into the nerve endings. “Give me your confessions, little one.” She pushes forward and captures her mouth.

“I miss my wings,” Kara finally hisses into her lover’s teeth after a minute. “I think I might miss them enough to start a war,” she growls like a beast.

Lena suddenly feels the pain, butter-thick, the thousand wasps spat down her windpipe as they kiss each other’s lips. The wasps swirl in her chest cavity, buzzing and pricking behind her ribcage. Lena is big enough to take it, deiform enough to hold that pain and make it holy… perhaps if only because there can be redemption waiting for wasps too, she thinks, and then turns her attention back to Kara.

“What else?” Lena rolls her wife over, hands spreading out her bottom, fingers digging through the perfect ample flesh. “Tell me what you yearn for, and then let me remind you otherwise.”

“How pristine we were,” Kara stutters and weeps, her heart breaking. “I miss the feeling of polished brass horns and weaved honeysuckle for crowns when God came back on Sundays.”

Lena spanks her bottom hard like a burst of thunder.

“I don’t miss it,” Lena admits over the sound of Kara’s sobs. “You forget that Gabrielle had us scrubbing our wings in the creek for ten-thousand years till our fingers ached to bleed, he made us polish those brass horns with whips thrashing our impenetrable backs. We were made from His light yet too unclean for His eyes. Oh it was never our Heaven, Kara,” Lena reminds with only the most gentle, loving tone. “It was His, made for them, and it will always be so.”

Kara peers over her shoulder, weepy-eyed and beautiful in her suffering. “And we are His no more?” It’s uttered with a sense of sarcasm.

“You are mine,” Lena hushes, her body settling on top of the crybaby’s spine, fingers seeking out fingers, their hands interlocking tight and fast. “You are mine, and so you shall be until we are nothing more than the dreams of hungry children, you are mine as I belong to you. Please, let me give you a wonderful gift?” She tucks her chin over her wife’s shoulder.

Kara weeps, nodding and pressing her hips backwards into the sturdiness of Lena’s bones, soothing herself immeasurably with the divine shape of her body.

“Good girl,” Lena whispers and pulls away, clambering off the bed to fetch something. “Tell me, brother, is there anything more Holy than the calmness that follows after suffering?” She picks up her burgundy trousers from the rug and unweaves the leather belt.

“Perhaps not,” Kara admits reluctantly.

“Then why are you so quick to rob the old woman in town of her arthritis?” Lena blinks, folding the belt up into a tool in her fist for absolution. “Why did you sing sad laments against the dying messiah’s ear when you knew his suffering was the means of eternal redemption?” She thrashes the belt and makes the air snap.

“Because none of it is fair!” Kara despairs and flinches at the snapping sound. “It’s wrong that they have to suffer! It’s wrong that cancer takes the children, that the homeless don’t make the winter, all of it, every last wrong unto this world, they shouldn’t have to hurt in order to earn His good favour—”

“Not to earn His good favour,” Lena interrupts with utter calmness. “The humans hurt for a short time, perhaps so they have measure for eternal peace. Without suffering…” Lena pauses, then smiles. “Well, the humans would just be angels instead.” She shrugs, feeling indifferent about it.

When the belt strikes Kara’s back she jolts and gasps a noiseless sound. The belt comes down in thrashes, premeditated, precise, all across her shoulderblades with the force of katabatic winds. Kara huffs and puffs, fingers digging into the pillows until she crushes them to vapour.

“Tell me of a Heavenly pleasure more earnest than flesh aching purple hymns,” Lena’s voice throbs in a language too high for the human ear. “In Heaven we were servants but here you are a king, this pain is _yours_ , Kara, it belongs only to you.”

Kara cries softly, her breaths deepening so hard it pushes her ribs out. “Angels aren’t supposed to be dirty and bruised,” she mumbles, suddenly remembering the time before when she was _forced_ to be pristine.

“You are allowed to be dirty and bruised now,” Lena promises her wife and lashes her spine. “And I will still love you, I will still think you are Holy even if He does not. This world is full of such simple joyous pleasures, my love, let this suffering be one of them?”

“Will you still think I’m beautiful?” Kara looks like a frightened child all of a sudden.

“Yes,” Lena doesn’t skip a beat. “My hands were built differently. They were built for strong, wild things. My hands were built for _you_ , Little Horn.” She paints another stroke of lilac into her creamy skin. “There will be no wars today, Kara, _only peace_.”

***

A great storm had arisen seemingly out of nowhere as they slept that night, it came all at once, the worst the town had seen in half-a-century.

The storm had desecrated everything, ripped down the church steeple, flattened the houses south of the woods, tore through and lasted for two days straight without pause or wane.

Lena watches Kara finally open the kitchen curtains, then she watches her expression become tight and infuriated. Lena focuses solely on her spine when she wanders over, her knuckles tracing along deep purple bruises, then the raised welts on her backside. Eventually, Lena manages to glance out of the window and takes stock of the situation.

But Kara is beautiful, in this light she looks fragile and human, and so Lena selfishly glances back to admire the marks a tiny bit more despite the pressing issue to hand.

“Do you think He did it to spite me?” Kara squints, confused and unsure of how to take the pettiness. “Why does He always spite me and never you— _ah!_ ” Her palms are bloody and cut, a tiny fistful of diamonds rolling into the sink from where she crushed the curtains too hard.

Lena says nothing, she just takes the dish rag from the oven handle and presses it into the scratched, cut flesh. She hums a soothing noise, tending to her wife’s palms, pressing her forehead into the side of her temple.

Outside, Kara’s garden sits ripped apart and disemboweled. The flowers were dragged out of their beds, dying in distant sporadic piles of broken stems and torn-out roots. The fence was gone, the greenhouse shattered, the earth upturned and raised to nothing. All of Kara’s hard work, a hundred years worth of good springs, all of it gone in an instant.

Lena understands it perfectly.

“He’s just giving you something to keep you preoccupied. When you’re busy creating things of your own—” She slips arms around the devil’s warm, pushing belly and holds her tight. “He learned his lesson the first time, Kara, nobody wants you starting another uprising. As long as you’re a gardener…” Lena hesitates, but she feels the fallen angel’s hemlock temper start to soften into calmness. “There is peace.” She dips down and kisses the fidgeting bruise on her shoulder.

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